


i would sow flower petals into your hair

by Itgoeson



Series: i will sow flower petals into your hair [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Levi is a Little Shit, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 13:36:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6568393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itgoeson/pseuds/Itgoeson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi and Erwin fight monsters. The walls come down after Levi - one after another. It's hard to live in their world without someone else to hold you up.</p>
<p>Alternately:<br/>Levi and Erwin figure out their relationship, are Good People, and the war is won at a cost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i would sow flower petals into your hair

**Author's Note:**

> This might or might not be the first part of a reincarnation au? We'll see. 
> 
> It's sad but not in a sad way? I don't know, fam, I'm exhausted and this has been kicking around on my computer for weeks. But let me know what you think.

A story has many parts. An exposition, building tension, the lurch and shudder of a climax and falling action. Some day, or many days, or maybe just at a time other than now, Levi thinks – or will think – or thought, that stories are made after the fact, and that life is so much messier than that.

\---

They’re at a ball, a banquet, a bloody waste of their time. They’re here looking for money to keep fighting Titans, here to keep the people who turn up their noses and still side-eye them, wanting to see just what makes Levi Humanity’s Strongest and Erwin the one person rumored to be able to – 

\- To what? Levi thinks. Tame him, maybe. Point him in the right direction and unleash him, like a rabid animal.

Erwin scrapes and bows a few feet away, kisses hands and asses, smiles like he never does when truly relaxed. 

And Levi. All Levi can think about is that, with all the blood on his hands, he has never killed as many people as these assholes. He has killed men and women like these, felt blood-steam wisp off his skin as another Titan fell, has held the sick and dying in the Underground.

And he will never be responsible for so much death as these people. 

They move like they’ve never had to fight to live. They laugh like they don’t know their champagne cost month’s worth of work, like they couldn’t buy medicine for hundreds of people with their shoes alone. 

Next to him, a woman in a gold wrap dress and lavender-smelling hair tinkers out a fake laugh.

He thinks about what would happen if he grabbed the glass out of the woman’s hand. If he smashed it on her head, used the jagged stem to slash at the man that had been hovering close to her all night. Took the knife from the table just behind him and started cutting. Would the world be any better off? Would he hate himself more than he does now for even thinking about this?

He could take everyone in the room alone, he thinks. They’d panic. Run for the doors screaming. The guards would stream in, struggle through the swirling mass. A couple civilians might try to fight him. No more than twenty of them, plus the shoddily trained thirty-something guards. He’s taken on Titans and the epidemic that razed the Underground years ago. What are fifty people to scattered guts and the smell of pus?

Erwin wouldn’t let him get hurt, though. Erwin would run interference, kill anyone that came at Levi too directly. Erwin would also likely stop him, given the chance. Levi is grateful for that, at least. Should he ever snap, Erwin would be there to stop him. Erwin hates death, would be furious over their lack of funding. 

(Because Erwin is barely human at times, cold-blooded and single-minded, but he is eminently Levi’s. When Erwin was just a squad leader he’d practiced smiling. Levi had seen him do it, had seen him rearrange his features a hundred times in the mirror until he found just the right face, then practice it more until it looked natural.

Levi doesn’t trust Erwin’s face. He knows better.)

(Levi had practiced showing nothing. He had come to the Survey Corps dead eyed already, but seeing people eaten alive was something he couldn’t prepare for. Erwin watched him learn to stop shaking, control his tells, had been the sole recipient of the three times Levi had yelled in the past decade.

Erwin doesn’t trust Levi’s face. He knows that Levi is Humanity’s Strongest because he feels.)

Erwin is talking to a woman, nodding and smiling as a man cuts into the conversation. He tilts his head, listening to the oily intruder. Glances over at Levi. 

Levi saunters over, finally paying attention to the conversation around him. He won’t kill anyone today, although Erwin would probably think his idle fantasies an amusing story on the way back to base.

“No, but surely there is a Mrs. Smith . . .?” The woman, tall and sturdy in the way only the well-fed can be, trails off, clearly fishing.

Levi is immeasurably unsurprised that Erwin caught his eye just then. 

“Humanity, perhaps,” he replies. Levi mentally congratulates him on being a suave motherfucker, for all that he has the same emotional intelligence as pig shit.

He slips into the small circle and takes the glass Erwin snags off a passing waiter for him. 

“This is Captain Ackerman,” he tells them, smiling. Levi nods to Erwin, then stares, refusing to blink until the circle – four, now, not including himself and Erwin – have looked back to his Commander. 

They’d made a deal: one night fundraising with minimal insults and Levi would get new cleaning supplies from the money they’d raised. Soldiers had to make due with the little they’re given, Levi supposes. Besides, Erwin hated to ask.

Everyone in the Corps knew how Levi felt about these people. 

\---

Three hours and one jiggly, furious man shouting as he was escorted out of the hall later Erwin and Levi are shuffling into their carriage. Erwin is disgustingly sober for all that he’d drunk, while Levi had taken a sip out of three glasses each before putting them on nearby tables. 

Next to him, Ewrin shifts and cocks his head. 

“Was I wrong?”

Levi stares at him. 

Erwin exhales harshly through his nose, the closest thing he has to a laugh most days, like he can hear Levi’s internal "I can’t read your goddamned mind, Eyebrows."

Come to think of it, a telepathic Erwin would make more sense than it didn’t.

“I don’t have anyone.”

Erwin says it like a challenge. He says it like he. Well, a bit like he cares.

Levi turns in the seat, twisted sideways, to look him in the eyes. “You are married to humanity, you pervert. I’ve seen the boner you get when you talk about freedom.”

Erwin rolls his eyes, and Levi almost smiles. Lets his eyes crinkle a bit in positive reinforcement. Erwin allows himself few emotional displays. 

“Humanity aside. My parents are dead. I was an only child. If I have any other family I don’t know them.”

Levi files that away. He’d assumed, but hadn’t known for sure. 

He also thinks, painful as it is – is the Corps not its own kind of family?

“Hange. Mike. Eren,” he lists. “So might as well add Armin and Mikasa.”

Erwin gives him a measuring look when he pauses. “And you?”

“Hardly worth debating, dipshit. Don’t fish for compliments.”

“I do love being insulted by subordinates,” Erwin drawls. His shoulders are loosening, spine bending softly. The way he looks when it’s just the three of them – just Levi, Erwin, and the terrible finality of these walls above them like gravestone markers. 

So Levi gives him another weakness. He lets Erwin keep looking at him, doesn’t try to redirect the conversation. Gives Erwin his ears and sympathy. 

Erwin takes his time, staring at him, backlit by the moon. Levi lets him. It is the closest to peace they know. Finally – “Us. Are we something?”

He says it gently enough to take Levi aback.

“We’re something.”

It almost makes Erwin smile. His face twists, caught between fondness and sadness. Levi hates it. He nods. “Something is good.”

And that’s that. 

That should have been that.

\---

Three weeks later, Hange is celebrating.

Levi would ask but he can’t bring himself to care. 

The recruits and younger Corpsmen are shifting around her, grabbing for beer whenever the pitcher is in reach. Fortifying themselves, maybe.  
Hange hasn’t stopped talking in half an hour.

Maybe that’s why Levi is still there. Mike took refuge next to him in the corner when they first got here, which meant they were getting into the hard liquor.

Fucking Mike and his fucking nose and his fucking face whenever he had to smell too much of it at once.

So Levi won’t ask what Hange has found out until tomorrow when they meet in Erwin’s office. When he can speak without slurring. 

Jean gets up, stumbling. Levi watches as he flails into Mikasa. She pushes him upright silently, while Armin’s eyes grow large, darting to Eren. Levi tries to keep from snorting as he gets up and nods to Mike.

He takes Jean’s arm before the inevitable shoving can start and pushes him out the door. The chilly air and rustling breeze are a relief after the stale sweat-and-humid smell of the tavern. Jean keeps stumbling now and then, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye. Levi keeps his eyes on the streets, scanning. 

By the time they make it to the barracks, Jean has grabbed Levi’s arm four times without being shoved off. He looks slightly dazed to be in Levi’s presence without dying.

Good, Levi thinks. He’d hate to get soft.

Jean wavers in the hallway as Levi grabs a glass of water for him.

“Uh. Sir? Why –“

Levi leans close, herding him to his bunk. “No one will ever believe you,” he tells him.

And then steals his pillow while Jean’s trying to tug off his boots. The brat couldn’t have it all. 

He’s halfway to Erwin’s room, pillow still in hand, before he realizes it. And then, well. He is already halfway. Levi taps on the door, unwilling to walk in unannounced.

There’s a confused moan, like Erwin made it to bed and – even more miraculously – to sleep before false dawn. Levi takes it for permission.

He shuts the door more firmly than he means to and hovers. Everything is just a bit too fuzzy. There’s a reason he shouldn’t be here, he thinks.

But Erwin is right there, and there’s still the pillow in Levi’s hands that’s probably covered in Jean-drool and whatever the hell else the kids get on them these days. He drops it, disgruntled, then shucks his boots with only small hops and one almost-fall. 

Erwin is sitting upright, now, eyebrows furrowed. He has lovely eyebrows. Levi is sure he would be even more intimidating if he had Erwin’s eyebrows. 

The bed looks so soft though. He can wait to be intimidating. Levi struggles out of the 3DMG straps, laying the whole mess over a chair with minimal tangles, and shucks his pants.

Nodding, he pushes Erwin down and collapses on top of him.

“Um?” Erwin hums. Not pushing him off, just humming in his chest, not willing to push too hard. Levi appreciates that. Appreciates how comfy Erwin is under him.

“You’re not as uncomfortable as you look,” Levi mumbles before sinking into unconsciousness. 

Erwin only stays up another hour trying to figure out how he didn’t see this coming.

\---

 

In the morning, Erwin rubs his scruff on Levi’s face, and Levi sticks a spit-slick finger in his ear because: rude. 

Smiling, Erwin gets up. He pauses when he sees the extra pillow and looks back at Levi. “Should I be reading into this?”

Levi snorts. “I’d never bring an extra pillow to sleep on. You’re fat enough for both of us.”

Erwin drops the issue and an extra towel on the bed. “Use my shower.”

And that’s that, until he overhears Jean complaining about his missing pillow during training and has to hide his smile underneath a hand. 

Across the yard, Levi’s face is stone, but he meets Erwin’s gaze for a few drawn-out seconds and Erwin takes a deep breath to keep from laughing.

\---

One day, when their clothes are neatly pressed into the same wardrobe with only a spare uniform left in Levi’s drawers in a different room for emergencies and some far-fetched sense of deniability, Levi stops sharpening his blades. He leans forward in his chair – unmistakably his because Erwin is an actual blanket whore with perpetually cold feet, and so sits in bed over literally anywhere else in their room – and hooks two fingers over Erwin’s wrist. 

Erwin drops his papers in his lap and looks over. 

Levi barely pauses to be amazed that he can take precedence over paperwork. Instead, before he decides against it: “Does it bother you?”

Erwin grins, and his face crinkles just the slightest bit, lines settling into his skin. Levi devours it, ravenous for every new face and minute Erwin and he share. 

(Erwin must be, too. Neither are good at smiling, or holding without hurting, or a great many things they try to ensure other people can do without the fear of being smushed to human jelly at any moment.)

Finally, Levi clarifies. “That we don’t fuck.”

Erwin raises his eyebrows. His lips thin, slightly. Tough shit, Levi doesn’t particularly want to talk about this either.

“I would never . . . make you do something you don’t want to do. And you might have noticed that I don’t have the most interest, either.”

Levi exhales sharply. “Bullshit. I’ve seen you check out my ass. I’ve seen you check out Hange’s ass.”

Erwin nods. “It’s not so much disinterest, which I suspect is more on your part. But. It’s hard to stop for long enough.” He looks away, searching for the words he wants in the wooden wall, cracked and weathered opposite him. Levi could wait forever for Erwin to talk. Words are slippery things.

(He trusts Erwin to find them.)

“It won’t shut off, and I can’t help but think about the backup plans for when the Titans break through. Who I’ll send where, in what squads. How Eren can contribute, how much to trust him.” He breaks Levi’s hold on his wrist to rub at the stump of his arm. “It’s like I’m waiting for every shift in wind or creak on the floorboards to be an attack. Difficult to concentrate on sex.” 

Erwin shrugs. Levi raises his eyebrows.

“No, Levi, it doesn’t bother me. It wouldn’t bother me if I did want to have sex all the time.”

Levi drops it. 

But a part of him still wonders – well, things aren’t different. 

\---

Hange wanders into Levi’s room. It’s tucked next to the squads’ bunks, privacy for the price of space. She laughs when she seen Levi scrubbing the floor, digging into the corners. 

“One day, I’ll find a way to make germs disappear like Titans,” she tells him.

Levi doubts it, but doubt’s never gotten him anywhere. He keeps scrubbing.

“The recruits are talking.”

“They do that,” Levi grunts. “So do parrots and pigs.”

Hange steamrolls over him, too used to him to be worried he doesn’t want to hear it. “They’re saying you have the best ass this side of Sina.”

Levi nods. “Greenies aren’t as stupid as usual.”

Hange laughs – loudly, maniacally, like she never learned any other way of laughing. Levi loves her for it. “Maybe. But I was thinking. I don’t think they’re the only ones who’ve noticed.

“It would be a fucking pain to have our Corps’ eyes checked.”

“Erwin, for instance,” Hange continues like Levi wasn’t making an extremely good point. “He seems to enjoy the view from time to time.”

Levi doesn’t stop scrubbing. It’s been three weeks since he cleaned this room, too focused on his and Erwin’s. “He doesn’t. We’re protecting humanity, not fucking.”

Hange cocks her head. “No?” She looks delighted though. Levi doesn’t trust that look on her face. It’s the one she gets when trying to smash all her food together into one bite, or when she goes out of her way to fight a Titan because she wants to look at their fingernails. 

Levi doesn’t give her what she wants. His mother used to say that shit built character. Maybe. In some stories, she has said this to him. In some, Levi remembers her voice.

(Levi is sure that, in a different universe, his mother would have been beautiful, right all the time, and a memory he could hold on to. This is the universe he's in, though. He tries not to think about it.) 

So he stays silent, because Hange likes the chase and Levi doesn’t like to make life easy for her.

(She’s what he thinks a sister might be like. It’s difficult to tell. He just knows she has seen him wash all the silverware four times in a row when Moblit came down with a cold. He knows she has terrified recruits into doing their laundry like clockwork because Levi gets twitchy when the linens aren’t clean.)

But Hange just nods and props her hand on her chin, bracing her elbow on the arm wrapped around her waist. “You’re together, aren’t you?”

Levi stares at her. 

“Don’t act surprised. You’re worse about taking up his time than Eren is about you.”

Hange doubles over laughing at Levi’s twitch. He’s not fond of the brat’s hero worship. Levi flicks a bit of sudsy water at her. She leans over – way, way over, and Levi wonders why he is surrounded by people that are Titans next to him, he needed to invest in the competent and short recruits, like Petra Ral had been. 

\---

They’ve seen each other naked. They’ve crashed into the same bed after slogging through showers to rinse off the worst of the grime from expeditions. They’ve mixed up socks and helped each other out of pants and straps and shirts when their muscles were cramped and their heads were splitting open.

They’ve seen each other naked, and sometimes, Levi’s seen Erwin look hungry. Seen him look fond and possessive at once, before looking away, a clear redirect. 

Levi appreciates it. Has known many people without his Commander’s respect and devotion to others’ security.

But Levi’s been looking, too. Levi’s been looking, and he thinks – Erwin might want something. Might appreciate it.

And their lives are so fucking depressing. Giving anything is rare, is daunting and huge. Levi wants to give Erwin things.

He’ll settle for this.

They’re showering after a morning workout, the kind they can only fit in once in a while. Erwin is finally back from the Capital, nearly shaking with angry energy and excited energy and generally buzzing energetically in a kind of endearing way. The new recruits are younger than ever, but they’re children of war – none of them could dream of being as green as Erwin had been, Levi suspects.

Then again, Erwin rarely talks about his life before the Survey Corps.

They’re showering together, and Levi hands Erwin the washcloth. 

It’s not something they do often – washing each other. But there’s a routineness of it, a trust. So Erwin does, rubbing down his back, kneeling to scrub his legs and feet, turning him around and starting the process in reverse. When he gets to Levi’s stomach, Levi opens his eyes and runs his hands through Erwin’s hair.

“I was thinking.”

“Dangerous,” Erwin says dryly. 

“You should suck my dick.”

Erwin blinks, trying to tell if he’s joking. No, no he is not.

“You’ll want to expand on that, Captain.”

Levi flicks him on the back of the head. “You like sex, but can’t have it. I’m not interested, but it’s nice when you touch me and there’s nothing wrong with my dick.”

“And this isn’t going to be a problem?”

Levi scoffs. “Best case, I get an orgasm and you get to feel good about yourself. Worst case, we stop.”

Erwin smiles – an honest-to-Sina smile – and goes to town on Levi’s half-hard cock.

Levi leans against the wall, hands still in Erwin’s hair. It’s nice, he thinks. Feels intimate. Better, he thinks half-guiltily, because he doesn’t have to think too hard about it.

It ends up feeling like everything between them – difficult until they stop fighting it. And Erwin looks so pleased when Levi comes, when Levi drags him back up to kiss him because he saw how people treated his mother. He knows better than to act like this was not a kindness, to act like it wasn’t a gift. And he knows that Erwin needs to feel like he’s done something good every once in a while.

(And it feels nice. Levi had known it would, but he’d also known that Erwin was about to shatter his life and forge him into something better all those years ago, when they’d been boys playing at heroes. He’d fought it then, and he’d fought it until now. They both needed something solid to push back against.)

It becomes a thing. 

It becomes a thing, and their story is a growing thing, spilling over into Levi stealing Erwin’s tea and Erwin cleaning his room every night because he’s a freak who wakes up before even Levi.

It’s paperwork on every flat surface and sleeping with half their gear on some nights. It’s Hange treating them like a unit more than ever, and Moblit buying her beer for an entire night because she called it and a bet’s a bet.

Levi is very, very okay with it being a thing, even if he rarely initiates it.

Because, occasional sex aside, so little has changed.

\---

It ends like everything else in their world ends: 

There are Titans. There are always Titans, in this version of the story. 

Erwin has only one arm now, and only one brain. He can only plan so far ahead. That is his secret, has always been his undoing. He needs to be there, to see the ground and smell the fear and sweat of his fighters, to plan the next steps. 

Erwin is inside the walls and Levi is not.

Erwin is safe and Levi is as safe as he has ever been able to make himself. 

It’s a cold comfort. 

Levi sinks his blades in the neck of a 12 meter and feels a sickening jerk from his 3DMG. It’s like when he felt his mother’s skin for the last time, cold but more than that, empty. It’s like the countless times he’s run miles and miles of blurring track with Hange. It’s like the first time he pressed his face to Erwin’s chest and took time to breathe.

He thinks –

– who’ll make sure Mikasa makes it back –

thinks 

– Erwin won’t ever trust Mike’s advice the way he trusts mine –

thinks 

– no one to watch the kids now to watch the wall to –

pictures

– Erwin planting sunflowers, crows eyes when he smiles like Levi’s seen twice now –

– Eren’s eyes clear of anger and Mikasa’s clear of responsibility and Armin’s without the tired calculations and the sincerity hastily hidden behind suspicion 

– a world where Jean doesn’t stoop his shoulders with the weight of Marco’s death and Petra still watching Levi with steady confidence and –

Nothing.

\---

In this story, Levi never has to know about Erwin’s ruthless march toward freedom. 

It takes three weeks and a body count no one can agree on. They are finally, agonizingly free of Titans. The secret – the basement, the formula, the experiments like Frankenstein – is razed. 

In this story, Erwin lives to fourty-six before being caught by two men at the edge of a small field dotted with corn outside the walls. They say he didn’t even try to fight when the shorter one flashed a knife, steel like Titan teeth to his gut.

They do not say that Erwin had been fighting to stay alive for the past decade.

They do not say that blood dripped from his mouth even as he nodded at Moblit’s father. Moblit, killed in the last battle, body unrecovered. They do not say Erwin put his hand on the man’s shoulder and nodded, lips tilting up, comforting him as the man’s breath hitched, comforting him until Erwin tilted forward and down. 

In this story, neither Erwin nor Levi are there to know that Hange smashes every dish, mug, and beaker within reach when she gets the news. They do not see Eren scream, or Mikasa’s hand brushed off his shoulder, or Armin’s arm around her as she pulls her scarf up to catch her tears.

They won the war. They could not rebuild the shattered world with their calloused palms and scarred ribs without cutting themselves on its jagged edges, dirtying it with the violence in their blood. 

Maybe, Levi would think, or has thought, or thinks – maybe it was the world’s way of finally giving them a break.


End file.
